Explore the vast range of titles available.

Recently, electrochemistry- and photoelectrochemistry-based biosensors have been regarded as powerful tools for trace monitoring of carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) due to the fact of their intrinsic advantages (e.g., high sensitivity, excellent selectivity, small background, and low cost), which play an important role in early cancer screening and diagnosis and benefit people’s increasing demands for medical and health services. Thus, this mini-review will introduce the current trends in electrochemical and photoelectrochemical biosensors for CEA assay and classify them into two main categories according to the interactions between target and biorecognition elements: immunosensors and aptasensors. Some recent illustrative examples are summarized for interested readers, accompanied by simple descriptions of the related signaling strategies, advanced materials, and detection modes. Finally, the development prospects and challenges of future electrochemical and photoelectrochemical biosensors are considered.

In the present study, a risk assessment of pesticides, phthalates, and heavy metals in strawberries (n = 335) in recent years was conducted by determining the estimated daily intake, target hazard quotient, and hazard index. The study used 128 pesticides, 18 phthalates, and three heavy metals in this determination. It detected 51 pesticide residues in the strawberry samples, and 97.91% samples had levels of at least 1 of the 51 pesticides above the limit of detection. In addition, 2.39% of samples had pesticides higher than the Chinese maximum residue limit. Multiple pesticide residues were detected in most samples. Bis-2-ethylhexyl phthalate, diisobutyl phthalate, and dibutyl phthalate were detected in the strawberry samples, with a high frequency of detection. Their detectable rates were 100, 100, and 89.9%, respectively. In most samples, lead, cadmium, and nickel were detected, with detectable rates 75.76, 92.93, and 92.93%, respectively. The estimated daily intake of analyzed pesticide, phthalate, and heavy metal residues appears to be relatively low compared with the acceptable daily intake. The average target hazard quotients and hazard indices were less than 1. That means that customers who are exposed to the average contaminant levels may not pose a significant health risk. Our results show that the strawberries may be polluted by many kinds of contaminants. Therefore, monitoring of pesticide, phthalate, and heavy metal residues in strawberries should be increasingly developed to fully protect the health of the consumer.

Despite extensive research, spinal cord injuries (SCI), which could cause severe sensory, motor and autonomic dysfunction, remain largely incurable. Oligodendrocytes and oligodendrocyte precursor cells (ODC/OPC) play a crucial role in neural morphological repair and functional recovery following SCI. We performed single-cell sequencing (scRNA-seq) on 59,558 cells from 39 mouse samples, combined with microarray data from 164 SCI samples and 3 uninjured samples. We further validated our findings using a large clinical cohort consisting of 38 SCI patients, 10 healthy controls, and 10 trauma controls, assessed with the American Spinal Cord Injury Association (ASIA) scale. We proposed a novel SCI classification model based on the expression of prognostic differentially expressed ODC/OPC differentiation-related genes (PDEODGs). This model includes three types: Low ODC/OPC Score Classification (LOSC), Median ODC/OPC Score Classification (MOSC), and High ODC/OPC Score Classification (HOSC). Considering the relationship between these subtypes and prognosis, we speculated that enhancing ODC/OPC differentiation and inhibiting inflammatory infiltration may improve outcomes. Additionally, we identified potential treatments for SCI that target key genes within these subtypes, offering promising implications for therapy.

Arthropods comprise the majority of all described animal species, and understanding their evolution is a central question in biology. Their developmental processes are under the precise control of distinct hormonal regulators, including the sesquiterpenoids juvenile hormone (JH) and methyl farnesoate. The control of the synthesis and mode of action of these hormones played important roles in the evolution of arthropods and their adaptation to diverse habitats. However, the precise roles of non-coding RNAs, such as microRNAs (miRNAs), controlling arthropod hormonal pathways are unknown. Here, we investigated the miRNA regulation of the expression of the juvenile hormone acid methyltransferase gene (JHAMT), which encodes a rate-determining sesquiterpenoid biosynthetic enzyme. Loss of function of the miRNA bantam in the fly Drosophila melanogaster increased JHAMT expression, while overexpression of the bantam repressed JHAMT expression and resulted in pupal lethality. The male genital organs of the pupae were malformed, and exogenous sesquiterpenoid application partially rescued the genital deformities. The role of the bantam in the regulation of sesquiterpenoid biosynthesis was validated by transcriptomic, qPCR and hormone titre (JHB3 and JH III) analyses. In addition, we found a conserved set of miRNAs that interacted with JHAMT, and the sesquiterpenoid receptor methoprene-tolerant (Met) in different arthropod lineages, including insects (fly, mosquito and beetle), crustaceans (water flea and shrimp), myriapod (centipede) and chelicerate (horseshoe crab). This suggests that these miRNAs might have conserved roles in the post-transcriptional regulation of genes in sesquiterpenoid pathways across the Panarthropoda. Some of the identified lineage-specific miRNAs are potential targets for the development of new strategies in aquaculture and agricultural pest control.

In this work, OmniVision’s second generation (Gen2) of small-pixel BSI stacking technologies is reviewed. The key features of this technology are hybrid-bond stacking, deeper back-side, deep-trench isolation, new back-side composite metal-oxide grid, and improved gate oxide quality. This Gen2 technology achieves state-of-the-art low-light image-sensor performance for 1.1, 1.0, and 0.9 µm pixel products. Additional improvements on this technology include less than 100 ppm white-pixel process and a high near-infrared (NIR) QE technology.

Vaccines developed using modified messenger RNA (mRNA) technology show robust efficacy against severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection in humans. However, viral evolution in human and non-human hosts may compromise vaccine performance due to the emergence of new variants with strong immune-escape abilities. Therefore, a coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccine that induces high levels of broadly neutralizing antibodies (bnAbs) and responds quickly to viral mutations is urgently required. Here, we designed a bivalent mRNA vaccine, RBDco, based on the variant of concern (VOC) spike (S) protein receptor-binding domain (RBD) chimeric from different lineages fused with Fc fragments. In mice and non-human primates, RBDco effectively induced neutralizing antibodies against several pseudoviruses, including the possible epidemic variants XBB.1, XBB.1.9.1, and EA.1 pseudoviruses. In mice, RBDco induced bnAbs against 11 SARS-CoV-2 variant pseudoviruses from different lineages. The neutralizing antibody titers against the prototype D614G and the epidemic variant XBB.1.16 were 19666 and 13274, respectively. RBDco induced mice secrete interferon-γ (IFN-γ) under the stimulation of RBD proteins of SARS-CoV-2 variants. In the mouse challenge model, RBDco treatment led to a 10-fold reduction in the viral load in the lungs of mice after the challenge. These results suggest that RBDco can induce a bnAb response and cellular immune response in animals, thereby preventing the occurrence of COVID-19. Furthermore, the sequential immunization results showed an improved neutralizing antibody titer in RBDco-boosted groups relative to the inactivated group. Enhanced differentiation of memory T cells was observed in the RBDco-boosted group. Overall, RBDco can induce bnAbs in animals via chimeric RBDs with the SARS-CoV-2 VOC in different lineages and is a candidate for mRNA vaccine for a rapid response to viral mutations.

This study proposes a multiobjective mixed integer linear programming (MOMILP) model for a demand-responsive airport shuttle service. The approach aims to assign a set of alternative fuel vehicles (AFVs) located at different depots to visit each demand point within the specified time and transport all of them to the airport. The proposed model effectively captures the interactions between path selection and environmental protection. Moreover, users with flexible pick-up time windows, the time-varying speed of vehicles on the road network, and the limited fuel for the route duration are also fully considered in this model. The work aims at simultaneously minimizing the operating cost, vehicle fuel consumption, and CO2 emissions. Since this task is an NP-hard problem, a heuristic-based nondominated sorting genetic algorithm (NSGA-II) is also presented to find Pareto optimal solutions in a reasonable amount of time. Finally, a real-world example is provided to illustrate the proposed methodology. The results demonstrate that the model not only selects an optimal depot for each AFV but also determines its route and timetable plan. A sensitivity analysis is also given to assess the effect of early/late arrival penalty weights and the number of AFVs on the model performance, and the difference in quality between the proposed and traditional models is compared.

Sarcasm often arises from subtle contrasts between literal meaning and speaker intention. As online communication increasingly includes voice-based content, detecting sarcasm across speech and text becomes more important—and more complex. The existing methods usually focus on generic multimodal fusion but often miss how sarcasm manifests differently in each modality. We propose a model that explicitly encodes audio signals into the textual representation space, allowing prosodic cues to inform language understanding. To extract relevant features at different levels, we use a multi-scale convolutional architecture. The experiments show consistent gains over prior models on both text and speech sarcasm detection tasks.

Moderate to strong earthquakes have been induced worldwide by shale gas development, however, it is still unclear what factors control their behaviors. Here we use local seismic networks to reliably determine the source attributes of dozens of M > 3 earthquakes and obtain a high-resolution shear-wave velocity model using ambient noise tomography. These earthquakes are found to occur close to the target shale formations in depth and along high seismic velocity boundaries. The magnitudes and co-seismic slip distributions of the 2018 Xingwen$${M}_{{{\\rm{L}}}5.7$$M L 5.7 and 2019 Gongxian$${M}_{{{\\rm{L}}}5.3$$M L 5.3 earthquakes are further determined jointly by seismic waveforms and InSAR data, and the co-seismic slips of these two earthquakes correlate with high seismic velocity zones along the fault planes. Thus, the distribution of high velocity zones near the target shale formations, together with the stress state modulated by hydraulic fracturing controls induced earthquake behaviors and is critical for understanding the seismic potentials of hydraulic fracturing.

Reactivation of the varicella-zoster virus (VZV) results in herpes zoster (HZ), which can lead to complications such as postherpetic neuralgia. The commercially available HZ subunit adjuvanted vaccine, Shingrix®, offers significant protection against HZ in older adults. However, the adjuvant system of this vaccine has limitations that necessitate the development of alternative adjuvant systems. In this study, we established a novel adjuvant system, BK-02, composed of both the Toll-like receptor 9 (TLR9) agonist BK-02C (CpG2006) and a squalene-based oil-in-water emulsion, BK-02M (MF59), using ELISA, ELISpot, and flow cytometry analyses. Our results showed that when combined with glycoprotein E (gE), the active ingredient of a recombinant HZ vaccine, the BK-02 adjuvant system elicited significantly higher gE-specific IFN-γ T-cell responses (486 SFU/10⁶ cells, 121-fold increase vs gE alone) and IgG antibody titers (Lg titers 5.2 vs 3.4 for gE alone). The optimal dose (5 μg gE + 30 μg BK-02C + 1× BK-02M) for inducing gE protein-specific cellular immunity was determined in mice. This corresponded to a clinical dose of \"50 μg gE + 300/500 μg BK-02C + 0.5 mL BK-02M.\" Additionally, pilot-scale samples of the recombinant HZ vaccine demonstrated enhanced gE-specific CD4 and CD8 T-cell immune responses, compared to Shingrix®. Moreover, the gE/BK-02 adjuvant system induced a Th1-regulated mixed immune response, enabling robust cellular and humoral immunity. These findings indicated that the BK-02 adjuvant system is a promising adjuvant candidate for the current HZ subunit vaccines.